Max Quality for DVD creation from DV in FCP 3

[Van G]

Hello All,

My first post, but I've got a lot of meat for consideration!

We have a 73 min snow action movie that was created in Final Cut Pro 3. Film has a lot of motion on a lot of white sences as you would think for snowboarding and skiing in the backcountry.

I am trying to encode the DV footage (720 x 480) which is letterboxed 1:1.16. My goal is to have the best possible encoding! Time to encode isn't an issue. The end piece will be used in DVD Authoring App and laid off to DLT for duplication.

I am a proficient user on both Mac and PC, but have always preferred doing the meat and potatoes work on my PC.

My first three attempts to encode produced reasonable results, all of them on the PC. I exported a Hi Res FCP Movie (QT) and then took it in on my PC. I then encoded with Cleaner 5 (DVD Wizzard), TMPGEnc 2.5 Plus (with QT add-on) DVD NTSC VBR 7000KBPS Template.

The Cleaner 5 encoding was better than the TMPGEnc . TMPGEnc produced poor titling with shifted pixels and not as smooth an image. I feel that both the encodings are noticeably degraded.

So my questions/comments are as follows:

- From FCP 3, how can I export the best possible file to work with for encoding? Or should I be using the DVD Studio Pro MPEG 2 export and work on the MAC?

- The file I worked with is a Hi Res FCP Export. When I opened the file with CCE 2.64 Trial it told me that it was 6000KBps CBR (16.4 GB file). Can I export a lossless file from FCP?

- What are my options for the best video encoding? Audio encoding? I've done some reading on CCE but would like to know this is the right choice before blowing 2K!!!!! What do pro shops/duplication houses encode our d-beta tapes with? Can I do as good a job as them?

These are my issues if the forum has time to look and respond, I have more than enough energy to respond and try different solutions.

[Van G]

The source of the DV is a mix of 16mm, Super 16mm, and mini DV. Film stock was transfered from D Beta to Mini Dv and all the footage was taken into FCP 3 via Canon XL1S (Firewire connection).

[Van G]

So I've started working with CCE SP Trial and my FCP Hi Res Export .mov is 720x480 6000 CBR - so is it worth doing a 8000 or 9000 max VBR mpg encoding?

[rjs123]

DOnt have an answer for you but can I ask a question?

Do you have any problems with audio sync using TMEGinc with the quicktime plugin?

I use the FAST product dv.now.av that was put out by Dazzle and it uses a quicktime compression. Ive had some great video results encoding to mpeg2 by saving my edited video as a fast dv file(quicktime) from Premier and encoding with TMPEG. BUT! the audio always drifts. If it was out the same through out I could fix it but it get worse as time goes on.

[Thorn]

I'm not familiar with FCP but when I do DV editing, I try to minimize the re-encoding. The more times you convert between lossy formats, the more you degrade the video. I usually convert directly from the DV or keep small clips in a lossless format after decompressing the DV.

Just a note, mainconcept is the main competitor against TMPGenc as it costs about $150 (compared to CCE at $2k), but all three have similar output quality. Cleaner isn't supposed to be as good so I don't know why you got better results with it.

VBR is way better for lower bitrates than a CBR would be. It can't, however compare with 9000CBR... At 6k I'm not sure what the quality difference would be. The good thing about VBR is that when you mix complex and simple scenes, the simple scenes can yeild some bandwidth to the complex scenes. The benefit depends on the material and the actual bitrate.

BTW, for 73 minutes I think you can go over 6000 if your sound will be ac3. It depends on what program you use to author if you can use it or not. PCM sound takes about 10MB/minute while ac3 can take 2-4MB/min. Might as well have the maximum bitrate that will fit (leaving some room for the menus of course).

On audio: no expert on fixing sync problems... but I often strip out the audio and process separately. This may not fix the problem, but if the audio was in synch before it should match up after demuxing then remuxing(well, it's not really muxing for avi files). My files usually turn out ok with TMPGenc or other encoders.

[goodspeed2]

1) do all your editing in FCP.
2) export your final product back to DV
3) import your final product DV into PC using Adobe Premiere capture
4) make sure you delete the stupid QT plugin in PC and use Microsoft DV codec to capture
5) use Tmpgnec Plus to encode as DVD, set rate to 8000~9000 rate with Constant Bit rate, Slow-High Quality setting.

** DO NOT USE THE STUPID QT PLUGIN FOR TMPGENC!!! just import using Microsoft DV codec and premiere.

[goodspeed2]

if you have DVD Studio Pro.... convert all your audio to AC3 streams.
do not use Cleaner Pro.. it really sucks.
and there's no point in spending $2,000 for a slightly better result with CCE.
make sure you convert two separate streams for audio and video.. because when you try to author your DVD.. you need to separate the two.
you can separate the streams in Tmpgenc when you choose which method to encode.

[The village idiot]

Ask a question of a thousand people, and you are likely to get a thousand different answers. So I'll throw in my 2 cents.

Export from FCP as DV (as goodspeed2 suggested). Then use main concept, or DVD workshop, or better still EditStudio and mpegXS mpeg engine. They are all based on the mainconcept engine, but each has some differences. The EditStudio has a free demo of both editer and mpeg. Get those from http://www.puremotion.com . Then render down to DVD mpeg at somewhere above 6000Kbps average VBR, peak 8000kbps, encoding quality highest, with LPCM audio. At only 73 minutes, you should have no problems fitting it onto one 4.2 GB DVD-R. You might also try to de-interlace with mpegXS, as it is a little smarter than the other versions. Only downside is that you will have a 4:3 aspect video at the end, with black bars top and bottom, not true wide screen.

Other choice would be to check with your mastering shop to see if they can convert it from either DV video tape, or DV on the mentioned DLT tape.

[goodspeed2]

a few more comments in regards to the question...

1) when i said export your FCP to DV... what i REALLY meant was to put your finished and edited video back to your DV tape.
2) then you use whatever program you want and import the DV tape back into the PC using Microsoft's DV codec.. not the stupid QT codec on PC.
3) and i highly recommend Constant Bit Rate over Variable Bit Rate since I've done many tests and got mixed results with VBR.
4) it is a whole lot easier to estimate the amount of space it would take up with CBR encoding then using VBR.
5) it seems the CBR quality is slightly better than VBR.

[Thorn]

Not to start up this argument again, but just to clarify:

CBR at 9500 would easily be better than any VBR, but once you go below that bitrate the VBR/CBR issue is debatable.

If you use pcm audio, you'll only be able to fit the video at about 6600kbps on a 4.3GB disc. With ac3, you should still be limited at about 7500kbps. That's getting high enough that CBR might be your best bet, but what bandwidth is sufficient all depends on how noisy your material is.

If you follow goodspeed2's advice and get the DV material on your PC, it will be easy enough to test this yourself. Do a CBR and VBR test at the actual average bitrate you'll be able to fit on the disc and see how they look.